Yes you can

Just read all the editorials and op-eds in any of your English newspapers and see how many of them paint a bleak picture of your future - not because Americans or Israelis or Indians (or the snow-leopards that reside in your northern ranges) want them to be so, but because their analyses are based on hard facts and reality. Of course it is a different matter if one refuses to see reality. The patriotic ones among you would probably step in at this point, with a brush in one hand and white paint in the other; ready to camouflage the state of morass you are in. But it's etched more than skin deep, right on the wall you need to see. Your 'valiant and a highly-octane' military cannot save your country - no military has ever saved any. Ditto with nuclear weapons. Please keep the mincemeat you threaten to make of others right on your dinner table, as you would find it harder to come by in the times ahead. A country has to be strong from within. Please give up that jingoistic attitude and get down to some nation building - in your own small way, if you can. -AARVEY, India, via e-mail, October 21.